Belt Sander Racing: A Sander Named Bruce

It occurred to me I hadn't posted anything here about Bruce, the Belt Sander, during my ElMoto hiatus. Well, here you go.

The rules of competition belt sander racing are fairly simple. In the Unlimited class, for the New England Belt Sander Racing Association, you need to have the sander plugged in to the cord that controls the start - you can see that in the video of the actual race - and it needs to be propelled by a commercially available abrasive product. That's it.

I took it to a slightly different place than most. There's a whole lot of friction on a normal belt sander drive, so I ran dragster-like wheels. You're limited to whatever power the extension cord can deliver, so I took a page from the DeWalt/A123 team (the benefits of living in Boston) and ran a Turnigy pack I had savaged on another project, and simply used the extension cord to throw a contactor (stepped down from 110VAC to 24VDC). That gave me as much power as the pack could dump, with no limitations of the AC cord. I ran one of my Briggs ETEK motors.

I also built the frame using those small BernzoMatic brazing torches you can find at Home Depot, which worked swell.

we got another inch or so over the weekend
(here, I'll draw you a picture of what it was like)

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yeah but anyway, looks like you got your sander to really hook up, tho its not much for looks(no bodywork, paint, stickers?)....was reading about it in the blog...and wondering: when the revs hit, you could see the tires 'grow' tall, just like they do in top-fuel, and wouldn't that want to pop the 60grit off?

As we used to say windsurfing, sheet in and sail ugly... no time to do bodywork lol. (Don't listen to him Bruce.)

Actually, I believe it was 24 grit. (correction, it was 36 grit). I seem to remember having to cut and glue them to fit the tires, too... And yes, that was a problem. I ended up using belts of fiberglass tape to try to keep the thing from exploding.